Early 2025 Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitcher Rankings

An All-Star break tradition, here are my mostly-for-fun 2025 player rankings. I’ve done my best to list players where they’ll be 20-game eligible next year, and the free agents-to-be are listed without teams. Players with contract options for next year have an asterisk included with their team names.

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Top 300 | SP | RP | OF | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | C | DH

Early 2025 Starting pitcher rankings

• The way I do my monthly rankings is I go team by team and assign a preliminary number to each player I want on the list. Once I’m finished with all of the teams, I click sort and usually get a list of numbers that corresponds pretty well with the top 175 I want to post. The only time this never works is when I’m doing starting pitchers for the way-too-early rankings here. Between all of the exciting prospects and the rehabbing pitchers who will surely be 100 percent next year, that veteran I give the preliminary 110 ranking to, we’ll call him Lance Lynn, is probably going to check in around No. 140 in these rankings. And then, when March comes around and some new injuries strike, some of the rehabbers aren’t looking so great and some of those prospects … well, they’re probably not really getting a chance in May after their team signed three free agents … that veteran invariably ends up back around 110 again. So, yeah, Jameson Taillon isn’t really the No. 135 pitcher for 2025, but he is 135th on the list of pitchers who intrigue me the most at this very moment.

• I also don’t imagine Gerrit Cole will be ranked 13th to open next season, but I’m still worried about the elbow. If he manages to get through September (and October?) healthy, I’ll probably have him in the top five next spring.

• The Dodgers lead the way with 11 pitchers here, though that includes Clayton Kershaw and his player option. I don’t imagine Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Kershaw and Dustin May will ever be healthy at the same time, but they’d love to have that problem. Next are the Rays with nine pitchers, including six of the top 60; I didn’t love doing that, but Taj Bradley and Ryan Pepiot had to be there with the way they’ve pitched this year and Jeffrey Springs was too good before getting hurt not to be in that territory. The Astros, Braves, Giants, Marlins and Yankees got eight starters apiece, though none of the Marlins are in the top 50.

• The one team without any starters is not the Rockies, who squeezed three on to the bottom of the list (Cal Quantrill made it mostly because I’m guessing he’ll be traded). Instead, the A’s placed no one, in no small part because they’re exiting their pitcher friendly park for a hitter’s haven in Sacramento. Luis Medina probably would have made the cut before his elbow injury. Next in line was Mitch Spence.

• Since this is mostly for fun, I declined to list Trevor Bauer and Julio Urías.

• I did sneak in Roki Sasaki at No. 53. It’s unclear if he’ll be posted by Chiba Lotte this winter, but if so, he’s probably going to be in the top 10 on the Opening Day list.